New Research: You Can Get HPV Without Having Sex

It's been drilled into us: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection, and failure to practice safe sex increases your risk of getting HPV. HPV is common—but it can cause everything from genital warts to cancer, making it a virus you really don't want to catch.

Now, new research has found that you don't necessarily have to have sex to get HPV. The study, which was published in the journal Sexual Health, analyzed 51 studies conducted on HPV. Among the findings, researchers discovered that HPV can be found in the genital tract of up to 51 percent of female virgins.

How is that even possible? Scientists say transmission happened from hands to genitals (think: masturbation, fooling around with a partner, or even just touching the general genital area), but they also found that HPV was on surfaces in medical settings and public environments which then found its way into patients.

In a nutshell, you could run the risk of contracting HPV during a visit to the doctor or your gym.

While it sounds shocking, Michael Cackovic, M.D., an ob-gyn at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, calls the findings "no great surprise." "There are over 100 types of HPV that we know of—different types affect different tissues," he says. "HPV is everywhere." Cackovic points out that it's a wart virus so any wart that a person has is likely due to HPV. However, he notes that the HPV types that cause warts on your skin are not the same as the ones that cause genital warts or skin cancer. (The study didn't identify which strains of HPV were found in the people studied.)

Since HPV is spread by touch, any close personal contact is a risk for transmission, Cackovic says. Ob-gyn Alyssa Dweck, M.D., an assistant clinical professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, says it's "certainly plausible" that you could pick up HPV from an exam table at your doctor's office or gym equipment, but says it's important to keep the risk in perspective.

"We have to be very reassured that in between doctor's exams, tables and countertops are typically wiped down with some sort of antiseptic," she says. (Ditto for medical instruments.)

As for the gym, well, you hope that's the case. Dweck says you run the most risk of picking something up if you wear short shorts at the gym (since you could potentially pick up HPV in your general genital area from a bike seat, which could make its way into you), or use steam rooms and saunas naked.

While Dweck stresses that sexual contact is really the biggest way the strains that can cause cancer are spread, she says you can take some precautions—namely, make sure you only frequent doctor's offices and gyms that appear to be clean. The data is surprising, but Dweck says it also brings some comfort. "I can't tell you how many times we have monogamous females test positive for HPV, and they're ready to go home and accuse their husbands of cheating," she says. "This study shows there might have been another reason."